“Lego®, B.B.C. Studios Team Up for Lego® Technic™ ‘Top Gear’ Rally Car,” by S.M. O’Connor

Lego A/S, doing business as The LEGO® Group, announced in Los Angeles, California at the L.A. Auto Show on Sunday, November 17, 2019, a collaboration with B.B.C. Studios, a LEGO® Technic™ Top Gear set: the LEGO® Technic™ Rally Car (Set #42109). Remote-controlled via the LEGO® Technic™ CONTROL+ app, the model is an authentic-looking GT rally car replica co-designed by LEGO® Technic™ designers and the B.B.C.’s Top Gear team. The LEGO® Group stated the two groups teamed up “to co-design the body of the car and accompanying stickers to create an ultra-realistic and fast looking racer that fans are sure to enjoy building at home.” According to The LEGO® Group, “The model… contains functions such as steering, multi-touch control and gyro control as well as different challenges and achievements to deliver a thrilling, immersive play experience.”

Designed for builders ages nine-and-over, it will become available globally on Thursday, December 26, 2019. [December 26^th is the Second Day of Christmas and the Feast Day of Saint Stephen the Protomartyr. In the United Kingdom, it is called Boxing Day.] The hope must be that boys who receive money from some relatives for Christmas will use it to purchase the set.

This is the first LEGO® Technic™ set designed in partnership with B.B.C. Studios. The set is comprised of 463 LEGO® elements. It comes with one large motor, one extra-large motor, and one Bluetooth-controlled smart hub. The model is remote-controlled with the LEGO® Technic™ CONTROL+ app, which can be downloaded from the App Store or GooglePlay. It can be driven both forwards and backwards. The list price will be $129.00 in the U.S.A. and £124.99 in the U.K.

“It’s exciting to have collaborated with LEGO Technic on this and it’s a very natural fit for the Top Gear brand. The LEGO Technic Top Gear Rally Car is the result of several months hard work from the LEGO and BBC Studios teams and we can’t wait to see it on the shelves soon,” stated Jason Easy, Head of Licensing UK, at B.B.C. Studios, which is a commercial subsidiary of the B.B.C. Group.

The current hosts of Top Gear are Andrew (“Freddie”) Flintoff, Paddy McGuinness, and Chris Harris.[1] The LEGO® Group and B.B.C. Studios note that Top Gear has a proven “track record of consumer products” that includes “the world’s biggest monthly motoring magazine,” D.V.D.s, books, videogames, and a Website that attracts 4,500,000 unique visitors per month. It has a robust social media presence that includes 2,200,000,000 video view on YouTube and 6,700,000 subscribers; 21,000,000 fans on Facebook; 2,000,000 followers on Twitter; and 3,500,000 followers on Instagram.

Formed in 2018 as a result of the merger of B.C.C. Worldwide and B.B.C. Studios, its functions include financing content, development, production, sales, and branded services. B.B.C. Studios has offices in twenty-two markets around the world. This includes seven production bases in the U.K. and production bases and partnerships in another nine countries. It generates annual revenues of £1,400,000,000, and returns approximately £200,000,000 to the B.B.C. Group, supplementing licensing fees paid by British subjects.

Niels Henrik Horsted, Marketing Director for LEGO® Technic™, added, “We are really excited to finally reveal the App-Controlled LEGO Technic Top Gear Rally Car. The car offers a challenging build for ages 9+ who are into authentic play and intrigued about how things work. The CONTROL+ app gives an extensive play experience with several different play modes and exciting challenges.”

Figure 1 Credit: The LEGO® Group Caption: This is the first LEGO® Technic™ set designed in partnership with B.B.C. Studios. Notice the picture of the Top Gear character The Stig, a mysterious racecar driver, in the bottom left-hand corner of the box.

Figure 2 Credit: The LEGO® Group Caption: LEGO® Technic™ Rally Car (Set #42109) is comprised of 463 LEGO® elements. The list price will be $129.00 in the U.S.A. and £124.99 in the U.K.

Figure 3 Credit: The LEGO® Group Caption: LEGO® Technic™ Rally Car (Set #42109) comes with one large motor, one extra-large motor, and one Bluetooth-controlled smart hub.

Figure 4 Credit: The LEGO® Group Caption: The model is remote-controlled with the LEGO® Technic™ CONTROL+ app, which can be downloaded from the App Store or GooglePlay. It can be driven both forwards and backwards.

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[1] The popular former hosts, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May now host the web series The Grand Tour, which is produced by Amazon Studios for Amazon’s streaming service Amazon Prime Video.

The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.